Datum: 26.05.2013 · 24h Le Mans

Ehret & his Teammates take the challenge of the „Ring“

Pierre Ehret and his teammates Marco Werner, Christian Bollrath and Ronnie Saurenmann archieved a 18th place in the highly competetive SP9/GT3-class at last weekends 24h of the Nürburgring. Their Audi Race experience R8 LMS ultra #14 got home in an solid 29.th place overall in very unstable weather-conditions, which forced the racedirectors to redflag the event for 9 hours due to heavy rainfalls. Although a better result was possible as Ehret explained:

„In my penultimate stint I was experiencing a local double-yellow at Pflanzgarten, which meant a speed-reduction to 60kmh. After 7 laps the flags were pulled away, but I ran into a line of cars still assuming the yellow was there, as they were travelling along with 60kmh. I made sure at the next marshall-post that the yellow was rejected and prepared to pass the slow cars. But the first was not prepared to be passed and pushed me over the curb onto the grass – where I got straigth into the barriers. Although the impact was with moderate speed it took some minutes for the marshals to extract the car. After my return to the box the frontsplitter had to be replaced, which meant we lost 5 laps in total by this incident. This was a pity because we fell out of the Top-20 and lost the potential to further improve towards the Top-10 as some of our competitors hit troubles at the end of the race.“

„Apart from this incident the race went well for our crew. We were very confident with the handling of our car. Due to the long red flag during the night Marco, who was our Pro, did not run his scheduled stint, which meant that just the gentleman-drivers did the stints, that had to be done at the end of the race on slicks on a partial wet track with aquaplaning-spots, which made the finish not easy for us.“

„At least I had the longest and refeshing sleep during a 24h-race so far. Immediate before my scheduled night-stint the race was red-flagged. So I knew immediate this would take a while.“

For Ehret now a longer break takes place. „As I will not start in Le Mans this year due to other commitments, my next race will be one of the next VLN-races, probably the 6h race in August. There I will participate on board of the GT-Corse Ferraris - a team that was also present during the 24h at the ring. After this also the Petit Le Mans will be on my schedule.“